Replacing sniffer dogs with a vulture squad probably seemed a good idea at the time. After all they can spot a dead mouse from 3,000′ up in the air. But the German police, who trained three vultures near Hanover, were disappointed. Fitted with tracker devices – and we know what problems that can cause (the [...]
Drug smugglers in Columbia have obviously been reading my posts about how smart pigeons are. So it must have made sense for them to use them as carrier pigeons to fly drugs into a prison. Unfortunately they overloaded the pigeon when they attached a 1.6 ounce bag of marijuana to its back. The pigeon crash-landed [...]
Saudi Arabian counter-espionage agents recently “arrested” a vulture they believed to be a Mossad spy. They had spotted it circling around in the sky in a suspicious manner (that’s what they do looking for dead flesh) and when they actuall caught it they found it had a GPS tracking devices attached to it. However after [...]
When you first sit down to write a blog you hope people are going to want to read it – unless you plan it as a private journal where you can unburden yourself or have a rant at the world (OK so occasionally I have a rant too). So it’s great for me that so [...]
See also: Pigeons faster than rural broadband
What next? Pigeons faster than a speeding bullet? To demonstrate how poor broadband connections are in rural England 10 carrier pigeons were released to fly 120 miles to Skegness carrying video clips on memory cards (some reports say there was only one – Rory the racing pigeon). The pigeon(s) arrived in 75 minutes by which [...]
We know pigeons are smarter than people at learning how to maximise the chances of “winning” but now it seems they have become music critics as well. The Kings of Leon had to abandon a concert this week when they were covered in pigeon droppings from above the stage. I’d say that is giving a pretty [...]
The best way to take a football penalty is to shoot straight down the middle as goal-keepers tend to move to their right or to their left. At least that’s the conclusion of a group of economists who studied penalty-taking in the French and Italian leagues using a branch of mathematics called (perhaps appropriately) game [...]
Imagine you are a contestant in a “Let’s make a deal” game. There are 3 doors to choose from: yellow, blue, and red. You choose the yellow door. One of the doors you didn’t pick is opened, let’s say the red door, to reveal no prize. You now have a choice. Stick with yellow? Or [...]
